Page 1 of The Duke and the Disciple

As Imitable as the Stars in Our Interminable Sky

Chapter1

Tell Me about the Stars

Adrahn raced half-blind through the darkened, snow-dense forest, deeply regretting his choice to participate in the utterly arcane tradition with every lumbering, strenuous step.

Sweat trickled down his brow and over his nose under his musty, untenable mask, his strained breaths creating garbled echoes inside the hot leather. He felt as ridiculous as he must look wearing a hulking wulf’s costume and chasing an unknown woman, also in disguise, but he’d come to the forest for one reason and one reason alone.

Aesylt was out there, somewhere.

Before the chase had begun, he’d searched for her in the sea of curly brunette wigs, peeling, plaster masks with garish rosy circles to mark the cheeks, and shapeless sack dresses, but the young women were dressed identical.

Once the horn had cut through the last of dusk, the night had become a blur.

A flash of brown appeared in a gap between the trees ahead. She was his “damsel,” as the young women taking part in the Dyvareh were called. She could be any of the dozen girls who’d signed up, but if the night was on his side, it was Aesylt.

If anything happened to her on the debaucherous night,he would never forgive himself.

The young woman ahead broke off to the left. Rahn slid across a fallen log and pushed himself harder to keep from losing her. Regardless of who she was, he had no intention of letting her be caught by some drunken imbecile using a wulf costume to justify his miscreance. The “wulves” weren’t supposed to chase any “damsel” except the one wearing the same color paint slash, but he’d heard more than enough stories about how the forest became a lawless place on the night of the chase. It was his first year participating, and he’d only agreed when he'd learned Aesylt intended to join for the first time as well.

The mask limited all except what was immediately in front of him, so Rahn had to turn his head all the way up to see the sky. Fat snow plopped into his eyes, hazing them. Scarce light remained beyond what the crescent moon provided, the reflection of snow offering an eerie glow.The wulfing hour,he’d heard one of the other men say to a fellow wulf, with a roguish laugh that had made Rahn’s peaceful blood boil.

He thought of the books piled on his desk in the library, how he’d rather be reading, studying. There was an almost sentient demand to the research awaiting his cohort, but even if he wasn’t concerned about Aesylt, it would have been ill-mannered to decline to take part in the annual Dyvareh after everything the Wynters had done for him.

The Chase, he translated in his head, as he always did with the modest amount of Vjestikaan he’d learned over his past year and a half in Witchwood Cross.

But for all he’d learned, he still had a long way to go before he understood. In what society was it agreeable to garb the bachelor men and unmarried young women in dilapidated costumes, in the dead of midwinter, and force them into a sybaritic chase that could end any number of dreadful ways?

The same one that sent one of their sons into the forest every midwinter to face off against a wulf for the right to hunt the forests in the coming year, he supposed.

Rahn pushed on through lofty, grueling banks. His panting was louder than the forest sounds, so he focused on slowing it, on listening. But other than the harried steps of the young woman ahead?—

Rahn seized, stilling. Therewassomething else.

Crunch.

He shuffled sideways until he was partly hidden by a broad pine. From there he spotted a fellow wulf scaling a fallen log. The man nimbly landed on the other side, darting his head around, and took off in the direction of the young woman.

Rahn reached up under his mask to wipe the sweat before peeling away from the tree. The wulf and the damsel appeared to know each other, engaged in a seemingly cordial conversation Rahn was too far away to hear. He continued to hold his distance, trying to get a better read on the situation, but then they disappeared from view, so he relinquished his hiding place and started after them.

Several moments passed and then a shrill scream tore through the forest.

Rahn took off running.

Aesylt wasproud of herself for not screaming. She was hard to scare, but she’d always been jumpy, and Valerian often exploited that for his own amusement. So when he’d come up behind her, surely bargaining forsomekind of reaction, with great delight she’d simply tilted her chin with an impudent grin and said, “Lost in your own woods, are you, V?”

Valerian groaned, long and deep. His hands went to his hips, a flare of patchy fur. “Come on, Aessy. I don’t believe for a second you were expecting that.”

She hadn’t been expecting him to stalk her, no, but shehadheard him coming. Knew it was him by the gait—smooth, cocksure. Even in the snow it was unmistakable. “Your attempt was actually quite boring and uninspired.” Her mask hid her grin. Her gaze swept his costume in what might have been disbelief, had he been anyone else. “Your color isyellow,Val. Mine is red.” She tapped her thick sack dress, groaning. “Wrong damsel.”

“What if I say it’s the right one?” He stepped closer.

Aesylt shook her head. “The Dyvareh has only just started, and already you’re breaking the rules?” She felt her own wulf behind her, holding distance and biding his time, probably salivating over his free night of stalking a helpless female. She’d been hoping to lose him near the quarry, but getting Val to leave her alone was going to take some effort.

Val clapped his wulf hands over his ears and made an obnoxious singsong sound. “What rules? Afraid I didn’t hear them.”

She quirked a brow. “Only a fool closes his ears when Drazhan Wynter is speaking.”

---